


Turning and Changing

by wesleysgirl



Series: Sentinel series for Jane Davitt's birthdays [5]
Category: The Sentinel
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-07
Updated: 2011-05-07
Packaged: 2017-11-06 04:20:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/414635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wesleysgirl/pseuds/wesleysgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Jane Davitt's birthday 2011.<br/>Many thanks to zortified for the beta!</p>
    </blockquote>





	Turning and Changing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JaneDavitt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaneDavitt/gifts).



> Jane Davitt's birthday 2011.  
> Many thanks to zortified for the beta!

At first, Blair doesn’t want to admit to himself that he’s the one that killed Jim.

It’s his fault that Jim’s there at that pharmacy to get hurt. Okay, so maybe it’s not _all_ his fault, because Jim’s tendency to take charge in even the most slightly suspect situation is all on Jim’s wide shoulders -- Blair is pretty sure it’s something Jim was born with. But if Blair hadn’t been sick, and if Jim hadn’t offered to run down to the store to get him some cold medicine...

He’s still lying on the couch, half in and out of sleep, when there’s a knock at the door. He’s glad, in retrospect, that it takes him at least a minute to wake up enough to drag himself over to answer it -- it forestalls the inevitable just a tiny bit longer.

“Hey, Simon,” he says. “Sorry, I’m --”

It’s then that he sees the look on Simon’s face, and knows.

“No,” Blair says.

There are tears in Simon’s eyes. “Blair, I’m so sorry --”

“No.” He’ll say it another dozen times, a hundred, a thousand, if it means making it go away. “No, Simon, _no_. Whoever it happened to, it wasn’t Jim. He just went down to the drug store to pick up some cough medicine. He’ll be back any minute...” But a glance at the clock shows him that Jim’s already been gone ages longer than he should have been.

“He’s still alive,” Simon tells him. “But they don’t think they can save him.”

“I have to go,” Blair says. He’s grabbed onto the first part of the information Simon provided and is determined to ignore the rest. “I’ve got to be with him. God, where are my shoes?”

Simon waits silently for him to shove his feet into his shoes and is already holding his coat for him by the time Blair looks up.

“Thanks,” Blair says, sliding into it, and Simon pats his shoulder.

At the hospital, they sit and wait in the hallway near the OR. Blair doesn’t ask how it happened -- doesn’t want to think about it -- and Simon doesn’t tell him. Blair’s hands are shaking and he feels vaguely nauseated, but he’s not thinking about that, either. He can’t. It’s better like this, feeling far away and distant. Anything is better than the sheer terror he’d feel if he actually _was_ feeling.

Four hours later, someone comes out to tell them that they’ve successfully repaired the damage to Jim’s liver and kidneys, but that his spleen had to be removed.

“So that’s good, right?” Blair says, hopeful.

The woman looks worried. “Detective Ellison took two bullets to the spine,” she says. “They’re doing what they can to mitigate the damage, but...”

No buts, Blair thinks desperately. He doesn’t want any buts. He wants Jim, healthy and whole. That’s the only thing he wants.

_I’ll do anything,_ he sends out to the universe. _I’ll give up anything, everything. Just please, please let Jim be okay._

It’s unthinkable that the conversation they’d had a few hours earlier, Blair on the couch bemoaning his cold and Jim rolling his eyes but finally agreeing to go to the store, could be the last one they’ll ever have. There are too many and much more important conversations they haven’t had. It can’t be over like this.

Blair sits staring at the floor. He wishes he could zone like Jim, that the places where the tiles met could become endlessly fascinating to him and he could lose himself in the thin cracks, his vision so focused that they were like the Grand Canyon. Being lost in the Grand Canyon would be good. Peaceful.

The hospital is anything but peaceful. Too much noise, too much commotion. Blair is grateful that he _doesn’t_ have Jim’s sense of hearing -- he doesn’t want to know what the surgeons are saying in there over Jim’s unconscious body.

Someone brings him a cup of coffee, and then later a bottle of water. Simon gets a phone call and goes away to take it, and comes back with a box of kleenex. “Here, Sandburg.”

Blair hadn’t realized he’d been sniffling and coughing. He’d forgotten all about his cold. It immediately becomes another bargaining tool.

_I’ll have this cold for the rest of my life if Jim gets through this. Sneezing, coughing, fever, the whole shebang, and I won’t complain once. Please._

He doesn’t want to think about what will happen if Jim dies. What the hell is he going to do with his life? It’s not like he’s going to find another Sentinel. It’s not like he _wants_ another Sentinel. He just wants Jim, and he never really even got to have him.

By the time Jim gets out of surgery it’s well past dinner time, not that Blair cares if he ever eats again. At first he’s told that he can’t see Jim until he’s out of ICU, but Simon pulls the doctor aside for a murmured discussion and the next thing he knows he’s standing next to Jim’s bed.

He wants to touch Jim -- he knows what it feels like to be the one in the hospital bed, confused and hurting, and he knows what a difference it’s made when Jim was there, holding his hand or even just resting a couple of fingertips against his arm. But he also knows that Jim could have his senses dialed up, could maybe be feeling every inch of this agony, and if that’s the case even the gentlest touch might be painful.

“Jim,” he says, keeping his voice soft. “Hey, man. I’m here. And you’re gonna be okay. Can you hear me? If you can, dial it down. Dial it all down. You’re gonna be fine.”

~ * * * ~

The next twenty four hours seems more like a month. Blair sleeps curled up in a chair in the room they eventually move Jim into, half listening to conversations doctors and nurses have about Jim’s stable, strong heartbeat -- good -- and the fact that they won’t know how serious the spinal injury is until the swelling goes down. That part sounds bad, and Blair is glad that he mostly slept through it because he can pretend that maybe it was just a dream.

Jim wakes up right around the time when Blair is starting to think he’s got to get out of the small room or go crazy. He’s been pacing, pacing and swigging cold medicine and only blowing his nose when he and Jim are alone in the room because he’s afraid the hospital staff will throw him out if they know he’s sick.

It would be romantic if the first thing Jim said was Blair’s name, but it’s just a mumble. It’s a determined enough sound that it sends Blair from the window to the side of Jim’s bed in a flash. “Jim? Jim.”

“Chief.” Okay, so maybe it comes out sounding more like “sheef,” but Blair will take what he can get.

“Yeah. You’re okay -- you’re in the hospital, and you’re gonna be fine.”

Jim swallows, and Blair can tell it hurts. “...happened?”

“Don’t worry about that now. Let me get somebody in here.” Blair pushes the call button and drags the chair he was sitting in earlier over closer to the bed. “How do you feel?”

“Like I got shot,” Jim says. His voice sounds awful, but it’s reassuring to Blair that he remembers at least some of what happened. “Water?”

“They’ll probably say no.” But Blair sticks his fingers into the glass of water left on the tray table and rubs them lightly over Jim’s dry lips. The sensitive skin tugs at his, like Jim’s mouth wants him, and Blair pulls his hand back. “Better?”

A nurse comes into the room and smiles. “Well, look who’s awake.” She asks Jim a few questions about where he is and the date, and Jim answers, but Blair is worrying too much about possible spinal damage to pay attention. He’s waiting for Jim to realize that he can’t feel his legs, or maybe his whole lower body. He’s waiting for Jim to discover that his world is crashing down around him at the same time Blair is thanking karma, fate and the wheel of fortune for not taking his away.

By the time a bevy of nurses, doctors and specialists have been through the room, Blair has given up sitting next to Jim and slid his chair over by the wall where he won’t trip anyone. Jim falls asleep twice in the middle of it all, but wakes up again easily enough, and no one seems worried about it.

Blair lies to Simon and says he’ll go back to the apartment to sleep even though he has no intention of doing so. He doesn’t like lying to Simon, but right then he’s so exhausted and emotionally wiped out that he figures he has to choose his battles. It’s a huge relief when the hospital starts to get quiet and everyone goes away, and he can sit next to Jim’s bed and watch Jim knowing that the other man is only sleeping.

“Chief,” Jim murmurs, and Blair realizes he’s been dozing.

“Mm, yeah? I’m right here.” It’s hard to get his lips to form the words, he’s so tired. He fumbles out a hand to touch Jim’s.

“Can’t feel my legs,” Jim says.

Blair is wide awake, his heart thudding in his chest, but Jim is already asleep again.

He spends the rest of the night staring at Jim’s feet, at the useless lump they make under the covers.

~ * * * ~

Jim doesn’t want to believe it any more than Blair does, but he gives up so fast Blair is shocked. Jim is stubborn. Jim doesn’t listen when someone tells him a solution isn’t possible. Jim determinedly continues on even in the face of unmovable objects. Jim halts unstoppable forces in their tracks. Blair believes all this and more -- Jim is the most brilliant and maybe the only star in Blair’s sky, and in the face of Jim’s surrender Blair is helpless.

“Okay,” Jim says to the doctor who has just explained the situation. His face is bleak, his eyes empty, and he nods his head. “So what now? Rehab?”

“For now, we wait,” the doctor continues. “There’s always a lot of swelling following this kind of injury, and it’s possible that your prognosis will be different once the swelling subsides.”

“I’m not so good at killing time,” Jim says. He finds a smile that might convince the doctor even if it doesn’t convince Blair.

“Then you’ll learn,” the doctor says. “I’m sorry I didn’t have better news for you, but don’t give up hope.”

Blair can see that Jim already has, and it hurts more than anything Blair has ever felt in his life; his right hand is clenched into a fist and he wants to use it to share his hurt with the doctor, who seems like a nice enough guy but who Blair knows he’ll always dislike for being the one who took away Jim’s hope.

It’s not fair, it smacks of blaming the messenger, but Blair can’t help it.

He does his best to put on a brave face for Jim, and to say the right things, but he can tell by the looks Jim is giving him that he isn’t doing a very good job. He’s sitting perched on the windowsill while yet another nurse is taking Jim’s vital signs yet again when Jim suddenly says, “Could you give us a minute?”

For a second, Blair thinks Jim is asking _him_ to go, but when he looks up Jim is watching him. The nurse says, “Yes, of course,” and leaves.

“Come over here, Chief,” Jim says. His eyes are warm and understanding, and Blair feels like the world’s biggest jerk for being the one who needs comforting when Jim is one who’s paralyzed. “Come on.”

He goes, miserably, and sits next to Jim’s hip on the edge of the bed. “What? Tell me what you need.”

“You,” Jim says. Blair’s heart gives a sickening jolt too wrapped up in emotion to make sense of, but Jim goes on, “We need to talk about this. Sounds like I’m gonna be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life -- sure, it sucks, but it’s better than the alternative.”

Blair can feel his jaw tightening. “Don’t think like that, man. You heard what the doctor said -- it’s still early, we’ve just got to wait for the swelling to go down.” He’s trying so hard to sound like he believes what he’s saying.

“You know what I am, Chief. You, better than anyone.” Jim’s voice is full of sadness. “You think I can’t tell? All I have to do is concentrate and I can feel it. I can wait the rest of my life... nothing’s going to change.”

“You can’t think that,” Blair says angrily.

“I don’t think it, I know it.”

“How can you be so fucking _calm_?” Blair stands up and paces one step away, then back again. “You’re not giving up like this, Jim. Not like this. The Jim Ellison I know wouldn’t just quit!”

“The Jim Ellison you _knew_ ,” Jim says, “has been replaced with the one here in this bed.” He spreads his hands out to his sides. “I won’t blame you if the new version’s too different from what you signed on for, Sandburg. If it’s too much -- you don’t have to stick around.”

The fact that Blair manages not to shout at the top of his lungs in response to that is pretty impressive, really. He does swing his arm in an arc and knock everything off Jim’s tray table, though -- the only thing that breaks is the mug with the flower arrangement that Simon brought by the day before, but the plastic jug of water explodes into a puddle on the tile floor. “Fuck you,” Blair growls, pointing his index finger at Jim. “I don’t have to _stick around_? Well, good to finally find out what you think of me.”

“Chief, I didn’t mean --” Jim starts, but Blair’s been keeping it together too long to stop now that he’s got his rant on.

“Like hell you didn’t! What kind of person would I be to do this to you and then take off, huh? Is that who you think I am?”

“You didn’t do this,” Jim says reasonably.

“You wouldn’t have been at that store if you hadn’t gone there for me!” Blair says. He’s getting louder, he realizes, and tries to lower his voice. “How can you not blame me?” Now that the anger is leaching out of him, he can hear the misery in his tone. He sinks down onto the bed again, rubbing at his forehead. “It’s my fault.”

“Blair. _Blair_. It’s not your fault.” Jim’s gentle hands reach for him and pull him down into an awkward hug. “Hey, come on. I don’t blame you. Shh.”

Blair tells himself he’s not really crying. Not that there’s anything wrong with crying. “I’m so sorry,” he mumbles against Jim’s shoulder.

“I know you are,” Jim says. “I know.”

“I love you,” Blair says.

Jim goes very still and very quiet, and Blair squeezes his eyes tightly shut. What has he done? He’s told himself a million times that he’d never, ever say that out loud. He’s allowed himself to think it and feel it, because hard as he tried he couldn’t stop, but it’s something he’s intended to keep to himself.

“What?” Jim says.

Blair straightens up. “We could pretend you didn’t hear me?” He knows that Jim heard him, Jim hears _everything_ , but if Jim doesn’t want to know, this is his out.

“Why would I want to do that?” Jim asks. He lifts a hand hesitantly to touch Blair’s face. “Chief -- Blair...”

In for a penny, Blair thinks. “Yes,” he says in a rush. “I said it, and I meant it. But it’s okay -- I know you’re straight, obviously you’re straight, you were married, and you’ve dated lots of women, and never any men as far as I know.” He’s starting to hyperventilate. “You don’t have to feel anything back, I swear. I mean, I know you love me as a friend, and that’s -- that’s good, it’s _great_. It’s enough.” He wishes, desperately, that he could read the expression on Jim’s face. Is that the look of a man who doesn’t want to hurt his best friend’s feelings? Did he just add another reason to the list of reasons Jim must have to wish they’d never met?

“Is this a guilt thing?” Jim demands. It stops Blair’s circular thinking in its tracks, thank God.

“You think I’m in love with you because I feel _guilty_?” Blair asks in disbelief. “Are you -- you’re crazy. There’s no other explanation for it.”

Jim smiles. Whenever Jim smiles like this, a real smile, Blair wants to kiss him but has always had to settle for smiling back.

This time, Jim closes his hand on the front of Blair’s shirt and pulls him in close.

“What are you doing?” Blair says, suddenly terrified. Jim’s lips are very near his -- their noses are almost touching.

“Kissing you,” Jim says softly. “As long as you’re on board with that. Are you on board with that, Chief?”

Blair’s mouth has gone very dry. He nods, and as it turns out, his first kiss with the love of his life, James Ellison, isn’t as momentous as he’d always assumed it would be. He’s too busy panicking to enjoy it, too afraid that this is going to end badly, too conscious of the fact that he hasn’t brushed his teeth for two days.

Jim’s lips taste sharp, the way antiseptic smells, but his hand is warm on Blair’s jaw. The kiss is brief. “Okay?” Jim asks.

“I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to be asking _you_ that,” Blair says. “You should be sleeping, or... resting. Something.”

“I think this is exactly what I should be doing.” Jim sighs and rubs his hand over Blair’s hair, which is probably even more messy and tangled than usual. “Well, and telling you the feeling is mutual, but you have to know that.” Blair looks at him blankly. “I’m so fucking in love with you, Chief. I can’t imagine my life without you. I wouldn’t want to.”

Blair is overwhelmed by the intensity of Jim’s gaze and the sincerity of his words. “I -- didn’t know.”

“Then I’m a hell of a friend,” Jim says ruefully. “If you didn’t know, you’re the only one. You know how many people have guessed? And asked me when I was going to do something about it?”

Groaning, Blair drops his face down into his hand and shakes his head. “But not Simon, right? Please tell me not Simon.”

“I don’t know,” Jim says. “He hasn’t said anything, at least.”

“We wasted so much time.” Blair feels sick thinking about it, about how their chance came so close to being lost.

“But not anymore.” Jim sounds certain of that. “Thank God you had the balls to say something. I don’t know if I ever would have. Scared the shit out of me.”

“You? Scared?” Blair finds that hard to believe. “No way.”

“Yeah way.” Jim strokes Blair’s hair, and Blair leans into the touch. “Hey, Blair?”

“Yeah?”

“You sure _you_ aren’t too scared?”

“For what? To kiss you again?” Blair proves that he isn’t by doing it, pressing his lips to Jim’s softly.

“To be stuck with me,” Jim clarifies. “Guy in a wheelchair the rest of his life? It’s gonna suck, sometimes. Hell of a thing to sign on for.”

Blair looks into Jim’s face, so familiar and, right at that moment, new at the same time. “I signed on a long time ago. Nothing has changed.”

“But --”

Blair stops Jim, a fingertip on his mouth. “ _Nothing_ has changed.” He can feel his finger warming from the contact with Jim’s skin, almost tingling, and frowns as he pulls his hand away. “Did you...?”

Jim nods. “Yeah. What the hell was that?”

“I don’t know.” Blair’s thoughts are racing. “Hang on, let me...” He brushes his fingers against Jim’s chin and feels the same tingle. When he holds his hand there, the tingling gets more intense, and he thinks -- no, he knows that he can see something happening to Jim’s lips. The skin there, dry and cracked, is smoothing out. “Can you feel that?”

“Don’t stop,” Jim says. “I think it’s -- Blair, _I can feel my toes._ ”

Alarmed, Blair starts to pull his hand away, but Jim grabs onto it. “What is this?” Blair whispers.

“I don’t know, but it’s working.” Jim’s tightens his grip on Blair’s hand to the point where Blair can feel bones grinding together painfully. “Keep going.”

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Blair protests. He puts his other hand on top of Jim’s and pats it reassuringly. “Easy there, big guy.”

“Sorry.” Jim stops crushing Blair’s hand and entwines their fingers instead. “You can feel that, right? That tingling?”

“Uh-huh. Like pins and needles.” The sensation is getting stronger the longer they’re touching, but if Jim is right and it’s somehow helping his damaged spine, there’s no way Blair is going to complain.

“Or an electrical current.” Jim grimaces. “Is this some Sentinel thing?”

“Not one I’ve ever heard of. Is it still working?”

“I think so. Look.” Under the blankets, Jim wiggles his toes. That’s reason enough for Blair to grit his teeth through the increasingly painful tingling. “What _is_ this?”

“I don’t _know_. Not, let me re-phrase that -- I don’t _care_.” Blair concentrates on the sensation and thinks he can feel something else. “Okay, tell me if I’m crazy here, but does it feel like it’s traveling from me into you?”

“Yeah. I mean no, you’re not crazy. Do you think --” Jim yelps suddenly as the prickling goes from painful to unbearable, or maybe not until it just as abruptly cuts itself off.

Everything goes dark.

~ * * * ~

“Blair? Come on, Chief, you’re starting to freak me out here.”

It’s Jim’s voice, and he does sound freaked out, so Blair forces his eyes open.

“Welcome back, beautiful,” Jim says, and smiles. “No, don’t try to move. Just give yourself a minute.”

“Did I pass out?” Blair tries to ask, but it comes out sounding funny and his eyelids are so heavy he can barely keep them up.

“Yeah. Want me to call the nurse?”

Blair shakes his head a little bit. Jim is on the floor next to him, supporting his head. How did Jim get on the floor?

It all comes flooding back, what they’d experienced, and Blair sits up. “Jim!”

“I’m fine, Chief,” Jim says. “Everything works. Legs, feet, toes -- it’s like magic.”

“Feels more like getting run over by a bus,” Blair grumbles, leaning against Jim and closing his eyes again because he can.

Everything’s going to be okay.

Of course, hospitals being what they are, it’s hours before they can get Jim released. The scars from the bullet wound and surgery are still there, but multiple tests show that Jim’s spinal column is fully recovered, without the slightest sign of injury.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” the doctor says, shaking his head and looking at Jim’s test results again. “Improvement, of course, but nothing this dramatic. You really need to follow up with your GP.”

“Yeah, I will,” Jim says. He’s got an arm around Blair’s shoulders like he’s feeling giddy with relief -- only he and Blair know that it’s because Blair is so exhausted he can hardly stand up.

“This wasn’t what I was picturing,” Blair slurs as Jim puts him into the back seat of a taxi.

“What, as our first date?” Jim asks.

That hadn’t been what Blair meant -- he meant he’d been imagining bringing Jim home in a wheelchair, and for that matter to a different place entirely, some place on the first floor without stairs, everything on one level. He’d thought about it a little bit, but not enough.

He’s barely awake during the ride home, and is grateful when he can collapse down onto the couch into a deep sleep.

Blair wakes up somewhere else. For a few, very long minutes, he can’t figure out where he is -- the room is dark, and the pillow his face is crushed up against smells different. Not unfamiliar, but different.

“You awake?” Jim’s voice asks quietly, and Blair turns toward him without needing to think about it.

“Mm hm. Um... why am I in your bed?”

There are only inches between them, and Jim hesitates before reaching out to touch Blair. When he does, it’s barely a touch at all -- he tucks a lock of Blair’s hair back behind his ear. “I wanted to be able to keep an eye on you,” Jim says.

Blair takes an internal assessment of himself. “I think I’m okay.”

“I think you are, too. Your body temperature is normal, heartbeat and respiration normal... You weren’t unconscious, you were sleeping.”

“I was so tired. What time is it?”

Jim rolls onto his back and turns his head to look. “Ten p.m..”

“So _insanely_ tired,” Blair says. He’d be more surprised, but every part of him _feels_ like he’s been asleep for a long time, like he feels after he’s been sick. And hey, his cough seems to have cleared up. “You carried me up here?”

“You may have developed some weird healing-Sentinels power, Sandburg, but you can’t fly.” Jim smiles at him. “Hungry?”

“God, yes.” Blair gets up and follows Jim downstairs. Watching the other man descend the staircase, it’s hard to believe that earlier the same day Jim had been in a hospital bed thinking he’d never walk again. “Should you be walking around?”

“I’m fine,” Jim says. “Better than fine -- I don’t think I’ve felt this good in ten years. Here, sit, I’ll get you a sandwich.”

They throw a few ideas about what might have happened around while Jim makes the sandwich and Blair eats it, but the reality is there are too many possibilities and Blair is going to need to do some serious research to find which one is most likely.

“Could we do it again?” Jim asks.

Blair shrugs and licks his fingertip, then presses it to the crumbs on his plate. “We can try the next time you get a paper cut or whatever. I hope we won’t need to repeat it with a more serious injury.”

“We won’t,” Jim says, and he sounds more serious than Blair was expecting. “I’m out, Chief.”

“What?”

Jim drops a hand down onto Blair’s, covering it with a caress. “I talked to Simon, and I’m done. On the force. I was thinking maybe... if you wanted to, we could take a couple of years to regroup and then focus in a new direction.”

“Okay,” Blair says. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re talking about quitting the force?”

“For now. Maybe not forever, but -- there’s other stuff we could be doing with this Sentinel stuff, you know? Not that what we’ve been doing isn’t a worthy cause.” Jim’s hand is still on Blair’s, which is distracting. “I want to take a little time, that’s all. Consider my options.”

Blair nods even though he feels like he’s missed an essential part of this conversation. “Your options.”

“Not --” Jim looks stricken, and tightens his hand on Blair’s. “I mean _our_ options. That’s what I meant.”

“I know,” Blair reassures him. Now that Jim has said it, of course he knows. They’re in this together. “So what are we going to do now?”

“Right now? You look like you could use another few hours of sleep.” Jim pushes back his chair and stands up, but Blair shakes his head.

“I think I’m going to crash out in front of the TV for a while. Want to? I’ll even let you be king of the remote.” Blair is already headed for the couch, confident that Jim is going to join him.

“Oh, well. In that case.”

They settle down and Blair’s eyelids are heavy again immediately. Each time his eyes close in a long blink, they stay closed longer and longer, until the credits for the show roll and he finds himself lying on his side with his head pillowed on Jim’s thigh.

“Bed,” Jim says firmly, and Blair lets himself be led along to his bedroom. His bed looks cold and lonely in comparison to how it had felt waking up in Jim’s, and he hesitates.

“Come upstairs with me,” Jim says, and waits until Blair looks at him to add, “Blair.”

The way he says Blair’s name makes all the little hairs on the back of Blair’s neck stand up, pricking to attention, and apparently his dick doesn’t want them to be lonely because it gets right with the program, too.

“I want to sleep with you.” Jim’s voice is smoothly hypnotic, his eyes clear and warm. “Can I -- can we do that?”

Blair nods, and Jim interlaces their fingers and leads Blair up the staircase, stops him beside the bed. Jim steps back. Slowly, Jim takes off his clothes -- first his shirt, letting it drop onto the foot of the bed, and then, just as slowly, his pants. He takes off his boxers.

Jim stands there, naked and hard, his cock erect and upright. Blair’s mouth is dry, and he can feel his fingers tingling like he’s hyperventilating, or maybe because they want so badly to reach out and touch Jim. Jim, who has just stripped bare in front of him. The meaning of this action, and of the way he continues to wait, on display, _on display for Blair_ , is not lost.

This is Jim, showing Blair everything.

Somehow, Blair is pressed to Jim, face lifted and a hand wrapped around the back of Jim’s neck to pull him down. He’s fully dressed and Jim is naked and so strong, and they’re kissing like the world might be getting ready to end any second.

Jim makes a sound against Blair’s mouth, a groan that Blair swallows. “Blair, please.”

It’s impossible to know what he’s asking for. Blair feels a flash of hopeless frustration, knowing that he’ll never be able to read Jim the way Jim can read him, but even that brief moment is enough to talk to Jim, who takes Blair’s face between his hands and holds it still.

“You know me,” Jim whispers. “You do. Don’t doubt that.”

Blair can feel his heart thudding in his chest. “I love you so fucking _much_ ,” he chokes out, and Jim nods.

“I know.”

“I want -- can I see it?” Blair slides his hands to Jim’s waist and turns him, framing the scar at the small of Jim’s back with thumbs and fingers. “Here, lie down.”

Jim murmurs something in a bemused tone, but lets Blair push him down onto the bed and study him. Jim’s skin is smooth and lightly freckled over his shoulders, the muscles relaxed in this position, the curve of his ass so tempting that Blair doesn’t even try to resist skimming his palm over it before focusing all his attention on the twist of gnarled flesh at the base of Jim’s spine. The skin looks as healed as if the injury happened twenty years ago.

“I can’t believe this,” Blair says, talking as much to himself as to Jim. “It’s amazing.”

“ _You’re_ amazing,” Jim says.

“Not me.” Blair touches the scar lightly even though he’s pretty sure it doesn’t hurt. “It was both of us, right? Together?”

“Yeah. It was.” Jim rolls onto his side and reaches for Blair’s hand. “It is.”

“I hear you, Jim,” Blair says earnestly, knowing what it is that Jim is asking him. “I’m with you.” He lets his weight fall onto his elbow until their faces are inches apart, then instinct takes over and he presses his nose into the hair behind Jim’s ear and inhales the scent of him. “I’m right here.”

Jim clutches at him, trembles. “Jesus, Chief. Can we? All of it. Everything. I want everything with you.”

“ _Yes_.”

Between them, they manage to untangle Blair from his clothes. The feel of Jim’s naked body against his own brings tears to Blair’s eyes, but he firmly keeps himself focused on the moment. He doesn’t want to lose any of this to inattention -- he wants to keep every second of it, wants to hoard it so he can savor it later. He might not have the senses of a Sentinel, but he’s going to use every bit of what he does have.

He loves the way Jim gasps at the press of his lips to one nipple, loves the restless, blind thrust of Jim’s hips and the drop of clear fluid at the tip of Jim’s cock. There’s nothing about Jim that Blair doesn’t love, and no part of Jim’s body that Blair doesn’t already know even though he’s touching some of him for the first time. There’s a thin ridge of silver-white along the underside of Jim’s cock head, the lifelong evidence of the circumcision Jim must have had as a newborn, and Blair drags his tongue along it before dipping lower to mouth at Jim’s balls.

“God, yeah. Do that.” Jim’s voice is awed.

“You like that? Tell me what you want.” Stroking a hand up along Jim’s thigh, Blair glances up at Jim’s face.

Jim reaches to brush a thumb over Blair’s lower lip. “I want whatever you want, Chief. Have you done this before? With another man, I mean.”

Blair nods. “A few times, but it’s been years. I guess, if you wanted --” He hesitates, wanting to make the offer because it’s Jim but still unsure. “You could fuck me?”

“That was convincing,” Jim snorts. “Actually, I was thinking maybe we should try it the other way around. You’re the one who knows what the hell he’s doing.”

The thought of sliding his dick into Jim’s ass is enough to make Blair bite down on his lip and close his eyes, while he tries to think of books he’s read, theories, anything that will provide enough distraction so he can regain control.

“Come here,” Jim says gently, and Blair obeys, lying beside him so they can kiss half a dozen times. “I’ve got an idea.”

Jim’s idea is a good idea, in fact, it’s a great idea. Jim’s idea is to roll Blair onto his back and slide down between his thighs and blow him. He starts with long, slow licks of his tongue, which feels more like teasing, until just as Blair is about to beg for more Jim takes Blair’s cock into his warm, wet mouth and suck him. And God, it’s so good.

It’s only a couple of minutes before Blair is moaning, and then Jim lifts his mouth enough to say, “Now?”

Blair, who’s reeling with sensation, says stupidly, “Now what?”

But Jim is already reaching for a box tucked in next to the wall, his hand coming back up with a bottle of lube and a condom. “This,” he says, and while Blair is still blinking and aching, rolls the condom down onto Blair’s dick, fists it with a hand slick with lube -- and thank God for the condom, which blunts the tight grip enough that Blair can keep control.

Jim sinks down onto his stomach beside Blair. “Come on, Sandburg. Let’s get with the program here.”

Blair laughs -- he can’t help it. Jim Ellison is spread out next to him like the world’s most beautiful, awe-inspiring statue, and what does he get? Impatience and a lecture. It’s so representative of their relationship that Blair isn’t even surprised. “Let’s get with the program,” he repeats, opening Jim up with two fingers. “Is this the program, Jim? This what you’re talking about?”

He presses the tip of his cock into Jim, into the tight heat of Jim’s body, and Jim’s shoulders tense. “Don’t stop,” Jim says.

“Make up your mind,” Blair tells him, and of course stops. Well, doesn’t _stop_ , but goes still and waits. “You could dial it down?”

“No. I want to feel it.”

Blair wishes he could see Jim’s face, but it turns out he doesn’t need to -- for once, he can read Jim like a book, from the slowly relaxing muscles in his biceps to the shaky, gradual exhale. “Okay?” he asks, kissing Jim’s shoulder blade, and Jim flexes his ass in response.

“I’m good,” Jim says. “You could, you know -- move. Moving would be good.”

Carefully, Blair slides inside. He’s trembling all over as badly as he ever has, the weight of what’s happening like the heaviest burden imaginable, but thankfully his body knows what to do even while his brain is struggling to keep up. He’s thrusting shallowly, and realizes that each thrust is accompanied by a little, breathless gasp from Jim, who has hitched himself up onto his elbows. “Jesus.”

“Yeah.” Jim groans and lifts his hips to meet the next thrust, which means Blair goes deeper than he has been, deeper than he’d meant to. The angle’s not great, it’s awkward and makes Blair feel uncoordinated, but Jim groans again and then, out of nowhere, shudders and comes, his ass tightening around Blair’s dick in waves.

“Oh my God, I love you so fucking _much_ ,” Blair whispers, and jerks himself into Jim a few more times, focusing entirely on his own pleasure until it breaks, spills, leaving him collapsed on top of Jim’s bare, solid bulk.

He can feel himself rising and falling slightly as Jim breathes. At first it’s a way of regulating his own intake of oxygen and there’s something soothing about it, but after a couple of minutes it starts to weird Blair out. He waits until he’s lying beside Jim, cock limp and sticky with the condom in the trash, to say, “Um, so... what do you think?”

“I think I’m going to keep you in bed for the next month,” Jim says, rolling onto his side and tugging Blair closer to him. “Maybe two.”

Blair kisses the edge of Jim’s jaw. It’s rough with stubble and feels like sandpaper. “Mm. Maybe three.” He hesitates, then asks, “Were you serious about leaving the force?”

Jim sighs. “I don’t know. I think so. It’s complicated.”

“Isn’t everything?” Blair sighs, too, when Jim’s hand comes up and cradles the base of his skull. “But... Jim, whatever you want to do is okay with me. I’m with you, all the way.”

Hearing this seems to lighten Jim’s mood, and his eyes are shining as he looks at Blair. “Chief... are you trying to tell me you’ve got my back?”

It’s such an awful joke that Blair can’t help but laugh and pummel Jim with a pillow, and that turns into a wrestling match that Blair loses.

Considering what he almost lost, he doesn’t mind at all.


End file.
